It is quite astounding to see the Lord’s redemption and the saving power in His resurrection in the type of the cleansing of the leper in Lev. 14.
Because Satan rebelled against God, there is another party in this universe besides God who sins and is full of rebellion. Because of the fall of man, rebellion and sin entered into us, and we all are full of spiritual leprosy in God’s eyes, being unclean and contagious.
Leprosy is something that comes from within man after man is infected, and it causes man to be senseless, with spots and whiteness, and contagious. This is our condition from the day we are born in this world.
Many believers, however, think that after receiving the Lord Jesus, we are fully healed of our spiritual leprosy. On one hand this is partially true, for the Lord’s life within us heals us from spiritual leprosy, but on the other hand – as we see in Lev. 14-15 – leprosy can return, and we as believers need to be aware of this.
We need to realise our situation and condition, and we need to come to the Lord and have a personal touch with Him, asking Him to cleanse us and heal us. Even after we are healed from the source of leprosy, we still need to be cleansed by Him again and again.
In order for Him to cleanse us, the Lord went through a long process to become some specific and wonderful things and accomplish some great matters, so that we may apply Him, experience Him, and be healed and cleansed.
The Lord is full of compassion toward us, He sees our real situation and condition, and He’s just waiting for us to come to Him and ask Him to cleanse us. He’s willing, and we also have to be willing to come to Him.
We need to believe into the Lord as our Savior and ask Him to heal us and cleanse us. Then, we need to obey His word, for the source of our spiritual leprosy is our rebellion against God.
We need to read and pray over God’s word, obeying the Lord and doing what He tells us in His word. In His word the Lord clearly says that there’s salvation and healing in no other but Jesus Christ, and through faith in Him we are cleansed, and by applying His blood we are forgiven and washed.
Therefore, we need to confess our sins as the Lord shines on us. As the Lord examines us with His light and we see who we are and what our condition is, we need to simply agree with the Lord’s light and confess our sin, and the Lord will cleanse us and wash us with His precious blood, and His life will flow in us to inwardly cleanse us.
From our side, we need to cooperate with the Lord’s grace and love by coning to the Lord, agreeing with His diagnosis, and taking His prescription by applying His precious blood, and He will flow in us as life to cleanses us inwardly and remove any leprosy from us.
How we praise the Lord for the Lord’s redemption and the saving power of His resurrection, as seen in type in Lev. 14 and in reality in the New Testament!
The Lord’s Redemption Cleanses us and His Resurrection Power Saves us and Heals us
All men who are honest with themselves realise they are sinful, and we sin by default, even without thinking about it. The Bible gives us God’s way to deal with sin and with our sinful nature, which is the Lord’s redemption and His resurrection.
When we believe into the Lord Jesus, He comes in, cleanses us, and washes us.
However, it’s is not as simple as this, that is, it’s not as simple as being cleansed by the Lord’s blood, because we are complicated people with a complicated and difficult situation! So the Lord went through a specific process to become some particular things to deal with all these aspects.
As seen in Lev. 14, the Lord Jesus became many wonderful things and fulfilled many specific types so that we may be redeemed and saved from our sin. The Lord Jesus had to be incarnated, and His humanity was typified by the cedar wood, being high in standard and honorable.
He humbled Himself and became in the likeness of men, taking the form of a slave, and having been found in fashion as a man that was lowly – as typified by the hyssop, the smallest of herbs.
The Lord Jesus came as the living One, the embodiment of the Father with all His riches, and He came that we may have life and may have it abundantly – He’s the reality of the living birds.
Furthermore, the Lord Jesus died on the cross and shed His blood for us, becoming the fulfilment of the type of the scarlet thread, and He was slain for our redemption (the fulfillment of the bird that was slain).
As He died, He as full of the living, eternal, Spirit of God, and He offered Himself through the eternal Spirit to God for our redemption, thus accomplishing an eternal redemption for all men (He fulfilled the type of the slain bird over running water).
Then, in resurrection and ascension, He is kingly, glorious (the fulfillment of the type of the scarlet thread, which signifies kingship), and His saving power cleanses us and heals us from our sick condition, bringing us into His resurrection and ascension (fulfilling the type of the live bird being let go in an open field). Wow!
How we thank the Lord for His redemption and the saving power of His resurrection, and how we praise Him for becoming so much to us in such a detail to cleanse us, wash us, and bring us where He is, in resurrection and ascension with Him, in the heavenlies!
Christ Himself is the reality of the living birds, the running water, the earthen vessel, the hyssop, and the scarlet strands. This is the best way to study the Bible, and this is how the theology of the Bible should be applied to our daily life.
We should prayerfully consider the types in the Old Testament in the light of the interpretation and reality in the New Testament, and we should apply them to our daily life.
In the real theology of the Bible there’s the matter of leprosy and of the Lord’s redemption and the saving power of His resurrection which washes us and heals us. Praise the Lord!
Thank You Lord Jesus for dying for us on the cross to release us from our sins and save us from the power of sin. Thank You for being slain for us to shed Your blood for our redemption so that we may be redeemed and washed. Lord, we come to You to be washed, cleansed, and healed of our sick condition. We need You, Lord. We thank You for Your redemption and the saving power in Your resurrection. We apply Your precious blood and we are full of praises and thanks to You for Your wonderful, perfect, and complete redemption!
Christ Cleanses us with His Blood and brings us to Experience Him in His Resurrection and Ascension
The things which are recorded in Lev. 14:6-7 as God’s way to cleanse a leper are not just a practice that applied to the lepers among the children of Israel, but something that applies to us as God’s spiritual children in the spiritual realm.
With help from the New Testament we realize that the Lord’s redemption not only cleanses us from our sin and puts us in a right position before God, but it also causes us to experience Christ subjectively, even to be brought with Him in His resurrection and ascension.
The Lord’s redemption causes us to experience subjectively, in the Holy Spirit, the Lord’s suffering in the shedding of His blood in His honorable, uplifted, and yet lowly humanity, and to experience His death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification (see Eph. 2:5-6; Phil. 3:10, 21; Col. 3:1-4).
On the one hand the Lord Jesus redeemed us by His blood, and He sprinkled us with His precious blood to cleanse us from sin, thus bringing us into an organic union with Him as our Redeemer and Savior (1 Pet. 1:2).
On the other hand, He wants us to enter into a subjective experience of Himself, just as Paul did, to experience Him in His death, His resurrection, His ascension, and even in His glorification.
The sprinkling of the blood seven times on the cleansed leper shows us the completeness of the cleansing of the Lord’s blood (see 1 John 1:7, 9); from His side, He has fully provided us with a way to come to Him and experience Him, and when we believe into Him, we can enter in and experience Him.
Christ is signified by the living bird soaring in the air; the fact that the living bird was let go in the open field signifies that the living Christ causes us, the cleansed sinners, to experience not only Christ’s death but also His resurrection and His ascension (see 2 Cor. 5:14-15; Eph. 2:5-6; Col. 3:1-4).
How wonderful His redemption is, bringing us not only in the right position with God but also into the deeper experience of Christ in His death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification!
Christ’s salvation based on the Lord’s redemption brings us all the way to the heavenlies, to sit us together with Him on the throne!
This is His full salvation and cleansing. He has already accomplished death, resurrection, ascension, enthronement, and glorification, and we can simply enjoy them and experience them by being in Christ through His redemption.
The resurrected Christ is soaring in ascension, and by applying the Lord’s redemption we are brought into an organic union with Him – we are freed, there are no more frustrations, and we are with the Lord in the heavenlies. Hallelujah!
Praise You Lord for Your redemption and the power of Your resurrection which cleanses us from sin and delivers us from the power of sin. Hallelujah! Thank You for not only dying for us but also being resurrected, ascended, and glorified! Praise the Lord, we are resurrected, ascended, and glorified with Christ, and we are right now seated with Him in the heavenlies! What a great salvation we have, and what a wonderful redemption the Lord has provided us! All we can say is, Thank You Lord. Thank You and praise You.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Leviticus, msg. 43 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (2), week 5, The Cleansing of Leprosy.
- Hymns on this topic:
# How wonderful redemption is, / My gracious Lord, in Thee! / Not seen, nor heard, nor e’er conceived / What Thou hast done for me! / Thou art divine, mysterious, / Beyond my grandest phrase! / Redemption is so marvellous, / Beyond all pow’r to praise! (Hymns #116)
# I praise Him for the cleansing blood, / What a wonderful Savior! / That reconciled my soul to God, / What a wonderful Savior! / He cleanses me from all my sin: / What a wonderful Savior! / And now He reigns and rules within; / What a wonderful Savior! (Hymns #986)
# What shall we say then for all of these things? / God’s Son was raised by the Father, approved. / Seated at God’s right, the Lord Himself brings / Me to the Father, all distance removed. (Song on, Christ Gave Himself Up for Me Out of Love)
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